This rather sweet time-travelling comedy raises welcome memories of French classic Les Visiteurs, especially with the latter’s star Jean Reno on board. On this occasion, he’s headed in the opposite direction, as a grandfather with dementia sent back to 1497 after finishing a round of a Jumanji-style magical game with his family. The film is based on the card game Werewolves of Millers Hollow, but manages to be not too cynical for a giant extended advert, with a certain bubbly spontaneity.
Despite his house being transmogrified into a timber cottage, Gilbert (Reno) finds that his mind has been restored after crash landing in the medieval era. And that’s not all: each family member has been gifted a power related to the role they play in the game. As the Hunter, he has super-strength; his son Jerome (Franck Dubosc), who was the Seer, can read minds; and his influencer grand-daughter Clara (Lisa Do Couto Texeira) is now invisible (ye olde satire). After wincing at an execution of a supposed sorcerer, they realise they must identify and kill the town’s werewolves in order to win the game and go back to the future.
Without having Les Visiteurs’ double-edged bite, which simultaneously took aim at outmoded yore and 20th-century absurdities, Family Pack has a good degree of Bill & Ted-style sport with olden times. It’s particularly entertaining on the feminist front, with lawyer-mother Marie (Suzanne Clément) landing herself in hot water for trying to advocate for the village’s beaten wives (ie all of them). And for a family film, it also deals (prudently) with sexuality, with Bruno Gouery pleasingly askew as an Italian neighbour whose preferences put him out of step with the other villagers.
As the family track down the chunky, Maurice Sendak-esque lycanthropes (done with practical effects, not CGI), the plotting is a bit route one. But this is a perfectly accurate board-game adaptation insofar as it’s well-packaged, undemanding fun.
• Family Pack is on Netflix from 23 October.
